


The Water Remembers

by iruutciv, Orchids_and_Fictional_Cities



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Angst with a Happy Ending, Japanese Mythology & Folklore, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-10-05 21:40:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17332847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iruutciv/pseuds/iruutciv, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orchids_and_Fictional_Cities/pseuds/Orchids_and_Fictional_Cities
Summary: There is a legend, Yuuri recalls, about making a wish on a falling star. They say that when the gods who rule over the skies watch over those bound to this earth, sometimes, stars slip out of their grasp. A falling star means that they have their faces turned to the earth, and will pay attention to those who would beseech them.





	The Water Remembers

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This was our collaboration for [_Morning Sun, Moonless Night: A YOI Fairytale & Fantasy Zine_](https://yoifantasyzine.tumblr.com/). Now that we've been cleared to post our pieces, here you go!
> 
> Our sincere gratitude goes out to the zine organizers and mods and everyone who supported the zine ♥♥♥

 

Over the blessed sea of Seto Naikai, dusk has fallen - not what the sailors call ‘dusk’, but true dusk, where the sky is at its darkest, teetering on the edge of night. The lone deity charged with protecting these waters emerges from their depths near the rocky shore, and tilts his head up to watch the sky.

He counts the stars, as he does after every sundown. When he finishes, he pauses, and counts them again. It seems that there is one more star out tonight than there should be.

There is a legend, he recalls, about making a wish on a falling star. They say that when the gods who rule over the skies watch over those bound to this earth, sometimes, stars slip out of their grasp. A falling star means that they have their faces turned to the earth, and will pay attention to those who would beseech them.

But it is a practice for mortals, a superstition. He thinks nothing of it, and lets himself sink back into the water’s embrace.

 

* * *

 

When he next surfaces, it is already morning. The sky overhead is a soft, light blue, as calm as the sea today, and equally vast.

Something is amiss.

He spots it immediately from afar. He isn’t sure what it is exactly - it looks like a sparkle from here, a twinkling speck on the beach. The glow becomes more intense as he draws closer, gliding over the surface of the ocean with only the tails of his robes skimming the water, preparing himself for the worst. He is no stranger to entities of a less-than-benevolent nature who have tried to infuse these waters with chaos, or bring terror and harm to the innocent people occupying the nearby islands. It is why he was given this duty, he knows. It is why the island-dwellers worship him.

When he finally reaches the shore, though, he does not find himself face-to-face with an ancient beast that had surfaced from the darkest depths of the ocean after a thousand years. Nor does he end up staring down at a trap laid for him by lesser deities prone to mischief, or foolish humans with delusions of ‘taking’ him for themselves. Instead, he sees a man with hair like shimmering silver lying sprawled on the beach, surrounded by an ethereal glow that would put the sun to shame.

His cheek is warm, the deity finds. He stirs, drifting awake at the touch, and his eyes look as though they were crafted from mirrors to the sea: a deep, rich blue, so full of life.

“Oh.” The strange, glowing man lets out a breath. He is almost too bright to look at. “Wow.”

“‘Wow’?” the deity echoes.

“You are so beautiful!” he gushes. “What is your name?”

 _His_ name? What, indeed. He has had many, whispered in prayers and curses alike, an endless stream of them across languages and dialects, too many to count. He thinks back over thousands and thousands of years, before the very first whispers had been made in reverence, and tries to recall the name he first knew.

“You may call me Yuuri,” he says at length, “if you like.”

“Yuuri.” The stranger tests out the word on his tongue. “I do like it!”

“And yours?” Yuuri asks in return. “What shall I call you?”

The glowing, beautiful stranger opens his mouth to answer - only to freeze. Yuuri sees the emotions passing over his face, a momentary shock, then confusion… before it gives way to something that looks very much like despair.

“…I don’t remember.”

 

* * *

 

Yuuri comes to learn that the stranger has not just forgotten his name, but also does not seem to remember anything about who he is, or how he got here. After too many of his questions are met with the same sad, apologetic shrug, Yuuri finally asks him if there is anything that he _does_ know.

“Well… I know for sure that you are the most beautiful being I’ve ever laid eyes on!”

His eyes shine, and the bow of his lips calls to mind the shape of a heart when he breaks into a smile. Yuuri flushes, and admonishes him to take this _seriously_.

“Oh, but I am!”

Right. Of course he is.

Still, he thinks as the stranger laughs and fills the air with joy, it is somewhat refreshing to have company like this. The nearby islands’ inhabitants have been wary of venturing far into the deep waters due to the temperamental climate, and ships seldom pass through when calmer routes exist.

Thus this sea has been a vast, lonely charge. It was one that Yuuri accepted willingly a long time ago, knowing what would be required of him.

And yet… sometimes…

“Yuuri? What are you thinking of?”

Yuuri ignores him, and shakes his head. “What is it that you want to do?” he asks instead.

The stranger draws his knees up to his chest and rests his chin on them, deep in thought. “I want… to go home, I suppose. But in order to do that, I have to _remember_.”

“Let me help you,” Yuuri finds himself saying, though it is not clear to him why he does. Yet it only feels right, and he does not quite know why _that_ is, either.

When the stranger inevitably asks him how, Yuuri explains one of the oldest truths that he knows: _water has a memory which spans eternity_. If at any point since time began, a part of the stranger was ever touched by a single droplet of the waters in Yuuri’s domain, he can help to recover his past. And even if this in fact has _not_ happened before - Yuuri does acknowledge that the chances of it are slim - they can still try. It may just take a bit more effort, and a bit more time.

However - and before he can agree too eagerly - Yuuri warns him that he will not do it for free. All magic comes at a price, after all - yet another old, immutable truth.

So be it, then, the stranger declares. And: “All the better to spend time with you!”

He laughs and half-strolls, half-dances along the beach with that strange glow following him everywhere he goes, and Yuuri hopes he has not just made some kind of mistake.

 

* * *

 

The first request that Yuuri makes of him is more of a test than anything else. He takes them away from the sea, and a half-day trek further into the island leads them to a small town.

They put on disguises beforehand - Yuuri because he does not want to be recognized, and the stranger because if he’s not wrapped in a thick cloak that covers his hair and most of his skin, he might end up blinding everyone. Nevertheless, townspeople all stare at him as he walks past, stopping in their tracks, marvelling at his eyes. _‘They look like the sea,’_ is what they all say.

The stranger beams at them. “The sea is my favorite place! It is where I met him.” He points at Yuuri, who grabs his arm and pulls him away before he can say anything more embarrassing.

They eventually make their way to a well on the outskirts of the town. It runs much deeper into the ground than one would expect, and when they peek over the edge of it to look inside, they are unable to make out the bottom of it. Even at the hour when the well sits directly under the sun, the water inside fades into an inky, opaque black.

“There is something of mine at the bottom of that well,” Yuuri says. “I would like you to retrieve it for me, please.”

The stranger simply smiles, and jumps in without warning.

Yuuri starts to call after him - surely, he must have a better plan than that! But he has scarcely heard the splash when the water starts to glow. _Oh…_ of course.

Yuuri is no longer surprised to see the stranger surface again, after only a few minutes, with the very item he sent him down there for looped through his wrist: a small, golden disk with a bell attached, threaded through a strap made of braided purple silk. Carved onto one side of the disk is an image of a dragon with a pearl in its teeth; the other side is engraved with the character 勝, for _victory._

“Is it precious to you?” the stranger asks, wringing out his long hair.

“In a way,” Yuuri answers. “It is a lucky charm, and many lifetimes ago, I called it mine.”

“Wow.” He holds the disk up to the light, breaking into a smile that teases at the corners of his eyes. “It’s so beautiful.”

Yuuri is inclined to agree. But he is not just looking at the charm.

 

* * *

 

He gives the stranger his reward right then and there. As he waits on his knees, Yuuri takes some of the water from the well, enchants it as it settles in his cupped hands, and pours it over the stranger’s head.

The constant glow around him subsides, just a little bit, as he opens his eyes.

The stranger remembers _something_ now: apparently, his name is ‘Viktor’. Yuuri thinks to himself, what a remarkable coincidence that is.

 

* * *

 

The second request is one that Yuuri regrets.

It is also one that he gives by accident, in a way. Night has fallen, and the silence that always reigns over the shore at this time has been broken by cries for help - about a dozen of them, Yuuri counts, in screams and prayers alike. It does not take long for him to spot the fishing boat: a paltry craft of wood and stubbornness, tossed about like a toy by the roiling sea.

For a fleeting moment, Yuuri does not know why the boat is being punished like this, and why chaos only reigns in the water close to it. Then he sees a dark shape lurking under the surface, a hooked tail that emerges and barely misses the side of the boat. He feels the chill of the wind blowing from the North, and he understands.

 _Isonade -_ this is far from his first encounter with it, and it is not even the first for this season. So he does not need to see the rest of the monster, with its body shaped like a shark and a mouth that could swallow a house whole, to know the danger that it poses.

The closest piece of land is a tiny, uninhabited rocky island in the middle of the sea. Yuuri has no choice but to push the waves towards it, carrying the boat to the shore. It also carries the _isonade_ with it, but that is a problem that he will address very soon.

“What can I do?” Viktor calls out, just as the first few fishermen start jumping onto shore.

“Nothing… just stay close, don’t go far!” is what Yuuri says without thinking, before rushing out to the sea.

It takes him awhile to drive the beast away. Despite its size, it moves through the water with grace, and does not thrash about like other monsters that lurk in the sea and surface for prey, making it harder to target in the darkness. But Yuuri has fought many of these creatures before, and he will not tolerate this interloper’s presence in his realm any longer.  

Eventually, he manages to lure the _isonade_ away from the shore, until it no longer has the fishermen in its line of sight. Yuuri is just about to banish it back to the depths of the ocean, when he feels its tail - _curse_ the soundless, almost gentle way it moves - curling around his leg.

“Hey!!!”

Yuuri has no idea when Viktor made it all the way out here in the middle of the water, or how he can possibly already be crouching on top of the monster’s head. The glow surrounding him enrages it, and it whips its body through the water in an attempt to shake Viktor off.

It eventually succeeds. And before Viktor can get away, it clamps its jaws around his hair, yanking him back.

Yuuri shoves his hand into the water, commanding the sea to help him. The sea responds in a heartbeat, gifting him with a piece of stone coral broken off from its reef: jagged, and razor-sharp. He lunges forward and slices through Viktor’s hair, freeing him from the monster’s hold.

Viktor throws his arms around Yuuri, burying his face in the crook of his neck.

As the _isonade_ finally retreats, Yuuri sees the long strands of hair hanging limply between its teeth start to dissolve. They turn into a fine, golden dust that glows before rising up and vanishing in the night.

 

* * *

 

He does not quite understand what he saw at the end of that battle, and as the rush dies down, he completely forgets to ask. But he does find out in the end, once the fishermen have long gone and the sea has returned to its former peace, that when he told Viktor to ‘stay close’, Viktor heard it as something else: ‘stay close _to me’._

And that was why…

This time, the catalyst for his reward is a hot spring at the base of the mountain, because Yuuri is sorry for what happened, and he wants Viktor to enjoy himself a little bit. He chooses a secluded spot and a late hour, away from the prying eyes of the villagers who would have turned this into a spectacle.

Yet when Viktor steps out of his cloak and first dips his foot into the water, Yuuri finds that he cannot quite tear his eyes away either.

They have both been soaking in the water, basking in the shared warmth and silence,  when Yuuri asks if he remembers anything new.

“Where I came from,” Viktor says. He has his head tilted back, and his gaze is focused on the sky. His eyes shine under the moonlight. “Where home is.”

Yuuri follows his gaze. The sky tonight is littered with stars. “And ‘home’ is… up there?”

Viktor nods. He is glowing less than he was this morning, Yuuri notices. But it is only understandable - he must be exhausted, or still recovering from their ordeal. Yuuri certainly is.

So he chooses not to say anything.

 

* * *

 

Yuuri’s final request is a simple one: a group of travelers has become hopelessly lost while exploring one of the smaller islands, and nightfall has caught them trying to find their way. Though they are nowhere near the shore, he hears their cries and prayers nonetheless, begging him for help.

Yuuri is not too fond of spending too much time out of the water at night. So he asks, and Viktor goes on his way at once.

He does not have to wait for very long before he sees Viktor emerging onto the shore, sporting a beautiful, but somewhat muted glow. The illumination serves its purpose, though, and the lost travelers trail behind him as he leads them back to their boat.

The next morning, Yuuri takes him to the river, just a bit upstream from where it feeds into the sea. Many a rite and ritual have been ascribed to this river by some of the visitors from far-off lands who have settled among the island-dwellers nearby. Something about its clear, saltless water lends itself well to renewal, he recalls them saying to one another, and to purification.

This is what Yuuri has on his mind when he asks Viktor to kneel before him in the waist-deep water, takes his head in his hands, and gently pushes it down, until he is completely submerged in it. He counts out the breaths that Viktor cannot take in his head, and silently utters a small entreaty of his own to the freshwater that has accepted them kindly as guests. _Let the water cleanse you,_ he thinks. _Let it return to you the memories you have lost._

When Viktor surfaces, he finally remembers everything.

Once upon a time, some forever and a half ago, he was a tiny, tiny part of a dying star. His brothers, his sisters, his mother and father, and _their_ mothers and fathers, together with countless others, all lived and died within that star. It is not anything remarkable, Viktor tells him; he explains how everything in this universe that is not of the divine was stardust once upon a time, and beings that shift and evolve, or die and are reborn, do so by means of stardust all the same. For Viktor and his family, and infinite other entities like them, the only difference is that they never left the star in which they were born.

“I remember now,” Viktor whispers. “For so long, I saw you… I watched you, from the sky, ruling over these seas. Every day I would look down and wish…”

Yuuri swallows when he trails off. He is not sure that he should be asking, but he needs to know. “What would you wish for?”

Viktor draws his knees up to his chin and shivers. “I wished that I could be with you.”

Yuuri stares at the water as it rushes past. Has the current always been this strong? It is roiling, angry. He tries to calm it down, but it will not.

Because _he_ cannot.

Because now that he understands, it dawns on him just what the death of that star and Viktor’s presence here, and how he has been glowing less and less as time goes on, all imply. _Stardust does not last forever._

“How long?” he whispers. “How much longer do you have?”

Viktor offers him a small smile. It is not an entirely sad one, but Yuuri cannot help but notice how tired it looks. He has been so, so blind. “Not for very long, I think,” he says softly.

The words echo in Yuuri’s head. His throat feels tight when he chokes out the words, “I am so sorry.”

“You have no reason to be. And I still have some time left…”

Viktor clasps Yuuri’s hands tight. There is an earnest pleading in his eyes as this time, he is the one who makes a request of Yuuri.

“Would you… would you let me spend it with you?”

 

* * *

 

It is not too difficult to see when the end draws near. It comes in the creep of exhaustion in Viktor's eyes, the breathless whisper beneath his laughter. He stops running up to explore the mountains and its nearby towns, as he has always been wont to, content to sit on the beach with Yuuri by his side, trading stories about the sea and the sky.

With every day that passes from then on, the glow he wears around him fades. Not too long ago, Yuuri still remembers, it was like basking in the presence of the sun itself, and he thought it oppressive. His heart rends, and he finds himself yearning to be blinded again.

On the night of the next new moon, Viktor asks Yuuri to take him back to the sea. He is a dead weight against Yuuri's shoulders, and not as warm against his back as Yuuri would have liked. His breaths run as shallow as the water they are standing in when Yuuri stops, and realizes what this means.

"No," he whispers. "Please."

"Yuuri," Viktor murmurs against the nape of his neck. "Can I look at you?"

Yuuri lowers him into the sea and picks him right back up before his shoulders can even slip beneath the surface. Viktor is almost weightless in the water, in his arms. Yuuri pulls him close, and tries desperately not to think about what is sure to come.

"Please don't go." His vision blurs, and the tears start to fall.  "I do not know how to go on without you."

Viktor forces a weak smile. "You managed just fine for thousands of years."

"That was before." Before Yuuri met him, all he knew was solitude and the sea, and that was... enough. It was tolerable, and Yuuri was content. But now, he’s learned of warmth and light and stardust, and how to cherish all of these things. He's stared into eyes that were somehow bluer than his ocean, felt the slip of silken hair between his fingers and the beating beneath his hand pressed against Viktor's chest, and learned what it means to be alive.

He's learned how to love from the sky, and it loaned him happiness that he wishes he could cling to. But the sea is about to take it away.

"Yuuri." Viktor's voice is barely above a whisper now. "I hope you don't regret that you met me."

"No." Yuuri shakes his head. "Never."

"Then I am glad." Viktor reaches out with a pale, shaking hand, and brushes off a tear with his fingers. He is so, _so_ cold. "And I am sorry that... I couldn't make our time last longer."

There are a thousand words that Yuuri can say, and a thousand more he wants to whisper against Viktor's skin, against his lips. But when the glow around Viktor finally dies, plunging the sea into darkness, they die along with it.

Yuuri buries his face into the crook of Viktor's neck, and weeps.

There is a legend, he recalls at that moment, about making a wish on a falling star. They say that when the gods who rule over the skies watch over those bound to this earth, sometimes, stars slip out of their grasp. A falling star means that they have their faces turned to the earth, and will pay attention to those who would beseech them.

It is a practice for mortals, he knows. A superstition. Yet Yuuri reaches into the very depths of his heart, where he never imagined he would one day bear so much pain, and submits his entreaty to the fragment of a star himself.

_Stay close to me._

_Please, don't leave me._

Yuuri remains in the water, not truly expecting or waiting for anything, just holding Viktor tight. After some time - seconds, minutes, hours, no-one knows - he feels a presence in the water, and opens his eyes.

Some time will have to pass - not quite forever and a half, but time nonetheless - before mankind invents words to describe the stunning sight that greets Yuuri in the water that night. The island-dwellers will call them firefly squid, _hotaru-ika,_ and visitors from further lands will describe them simply as ‘sea fireflies’. To those from further times, there is another word altogether: _bioluminescence_ , the phenomenon by which living organisms invoke some kind of magic within themselves to give off light.

And there is so much of it - Yuuri’s opened his eyes to find a sea dotted with thousands of blue lights, the same bright, brilliant blue as Viktor’s eyes. More of the lights appear as he lowers Viktor’s body further into the water. And when it sinks completely - out of his arms, out of his sight - he hears the same promise made a countless number of times, again and again until it finds a home in his heart, radiated by the lights surrounding him: _Here I am. I am alive. I am here._

But the next voice that he hears is Viktor’s - a soft whisper carried by the wind and the currents, warming his heart, drying his tears.

_You will never be alone again._

 

* * *

 

In the end, the island-dwellers residing within and beside the sea of Seto Naikai that are fond of superstition gain a new one: whenever they see a falling star, the sea recedes from the shore, and the water’s numerous glowing blue gods are silenced into darkness, they make a wish.

_For beings that shift and evolve, or die and are reborn, do so by means of stardust all the same._

And this is what the elders say: whenever a falling star crashes into the water, the sea deity’s lover - the one who once fell from the sky and, in his death, was sublimated into the glowing lights that forever reside in that blessed sea now - uses the stardust to regain his body for one night. You should make a wish of the sea deity the very next day, they say.

For in his happiness - so fleeting, but no less precious or real - he is sure to bless you.


End file.
